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Dawnguard even manages to improve on one of its parent game's few weak areas by including a follower character with a history and some genuine personality. The follower characters from the main game are so typically unaffected by events around them, and so repetitious in their use of stock phrases that it's very easy to start thinking of them as being little more than walking luggage racks.

The tighter scope of the expansion pack, however, has allowed Bethesda to create a companion that feels a lot more like a person, and offers considerably more context-sensitive dialogue options and actions, as well as conversation that actually extends beyond, “I am sworn to carry your burdens”. The explanations, descriptions and backstory she provides to the player while out in the field happily make this character an integral part of the over-arching story in a way that isn't always present in the main game.

This review has sold me on the expansion. Having a companion with some actual character (and maybe a growth arc) sounds like a revelation for a Bethesda game, too bad there aren't enough to make Skyrim even worthy of licking New Vegas' boots in the literature quality department.

Originally Posted by Koki

Some crap with no bugfixes or any fixes

In fact it only adds more bugs

*Yawn* Business as usual for a Beth RPG then. These guys will probably fix a lot in time.

There's a few rebalance mods out there already that you might wanna look into. To give a couple of examples, SkyRe which changes perks, stats, etc., Morrowloot which overhauls the availability of gear in the game world and switches high-end stuff to rare and manually-placed, and Skyrim Scaling Stopper. I should mention I haven't actually tried any of these yet, I've been bookmarking them in the event I might want to play the game again some time next year, they're mostly stuff you want to start from scratch with.

Originally Posted by EvaUnit02

This review has sold me on the expansion. Having a companion with some actual character (and maybe a growth arc) sounds like a revelation for a Bethesda game, too bad there aren't enough to make Skyrim even worthy of licking New Vegas' boots in the literature quality department.

Agreed, and New Vegas is hardly something to write home about either. I've been looking forward to Dawnguard and kinda had my hopes up that Beth would have a swing at a tighter plot and more character interaction, it's about time they tried taking a hint from BioWare CD Projekt Red.

Companions were a little one-note in Skyrim, but I still sort of fell in love with Lydia a bit. Nothing quite stokes the fires like long periods of awkward silences broken up by emasculating combat situations in which she pounds away at enemies while I prance around in the background firing arrows.

On topic, though: Dawnguard is akin to Bethesda taking everything I loved about their games and then doing the opposite.

I can't really talk much about the quality of the new quest-lines since I've yet to play them, but the expansion seamlessly integrates with the vanilla game's world, akin to Fallout 3: Broken Steel. It adds its new locations by expanding upon the vanilla game's overworld.

I.e.:-
Guards start talking about vampire attacks and the Dawnguard faction.
New loot can be found on corpses like crossbow bolts.
I found a book which read activates a side-quest for raiding a dwarven dungeon. It was done significantly differently than the copypasta ones seen in the vanilla game.